


A Testament Under Ice

by Hagoromo (thural)



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:02:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thural/pseuds/Hagoromo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What kind of "Guado tradition" involves randomly leaving all the bride's buddies on an ice floe while walking away slowly?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Testament Under Ice

He remembered how she came to him, certain and sweet. Such fortitude is rare; her dedication was sickening, more so because it was clearly unwilling. But he had only bowed and accepted her deliberation. In the intense cold of the halls of Macalania Temple, her fair frigid smile suited.

"You have made me the happiest of men, and Spira, too, thanks you."

"Maester Seymour, I -- "

"You have something on your mind." He'd interrupted, with a chill glazing his manner. It was both easy and pleasant to unsettle her train of thought, but she entrenched herself and continued.

"Lord Jyscal's sphere - did you truly?..."

"Can you not wait until after the ceremony to concern yourself with family matters?"

She had stared at him, horrified, until fumbling words spilled from her pale bitten lips. "You - but _why?_ He was your - your father!... "

"And obligated to pay for his sins, as I am. Do you judge me, Lady Yuna?"

She balked at that, her lips pressed tight, her eyes flickering with dim inconstant anger. She had not yet learned to admit her own feelings about anything; she was defenseless. He approached her in his slow serene manner and caught her hand in his own. She was very small and white with cold, and he, long accustomed to both the temperature and the disgust of the privileged, only smiled down upon her as he spoke.

"Should you lift your hand to punish me, I would not deny you. It is your right."

When he raised her fingers to his cheek she jerked her hand away, and his air of solemn penitence in her wake only antagonized her the more.

 

She trembled at the mantle. The thin shards of sun which penetrated the ice high above were baffled by golden drapes at the window. An uncertain brightness glinted upon the gilt arms of chairs and the polished stone faces of bookends, marble tiles, curling and arcane implements of worship laid on the sideboard. He unclipped his bright beaded necklace and laid it upon his desk, and his gaze was more warm and probing than the firelight.

"We must be brief." He sighed. His regret was real and well-formed. "Your friends will arrive at any moment. Come, Yuna."

She turned as though in a trance to the source of his voice. "I - I don't.... I've never done this before." Her fingers clutched and then she tucked her arms behind her back, conscious, perhaps, of how she might give away her true feelings otherwise.

"I am aware."

 

"Do I so offend you." Pitched between sheer wonder and insult, his statement hung heavy in the antechamber of the temple and rang against the carved stone. The praetor and the monks gathered there averted their eyes out of politeness.

"Maester Seymour..." Her eyes swept over him, he whose body indecently revealed the secrets of the modest Guado. She seemed to start at his size as though perceiving him for the first time, and her consideration moved more slowly over the width of his shoulders and the pendant green sash over his hips. His skin was perfectly smooth. "This is happening so quickly. I apologize for --"

"It is I who should apologize to you. It was presumptuous of me to put you in this position. Consider my proposal withdrawn; you must forgive me for so inconsiderately forgetting your feelings. No matter the benefit to Spira, I cannot ask you to sacrifice yourself _twice_." He leant back, looming in his displeasure, and turned his colorless regard to the clutch of holy men at the stair. "Leave us."

Her quiet answer could barely be heard over the departing footsteps. "Maester Seymour - please, let me make amends. To ease the suffering of Spira, like you said, I--"

"Such duty. Will you not consider _my_ feelings? I, too, would be bound by this marriage. To have an unwilling wife would stain my pride - it would disgrace my office and everything I believe in."

"I am not unwilling!" She cried, frustrated. There was some terrible game being played here that she could not grasp.

"So you _say_. But what of your _actions?_ "

 

His calm fingers moved within her. As he spread them inside her body and then curled his wrist under, and stroked gently along the upper wall of her, his eyes lifted to her. She was very warm, very slick already; when she spasmed against his intrusion his breath caught in anticipation. Her thighs trembled with the strain of staying up on her knees. Her hands over his shoulders clutched at him, her soft small breasts swayed, and yet she would not look at him. She was blushing intensely as she struggled to keep from making any sound; her teeth bared in a grimace of humiliation as she at last cried out and rolled her hips against his probing hand.

"It is time." He urged, withdrawing his deep seeking fingers and cupping her hip in one hand. His fingers were still moistened with her clear slippery wetness; it was this hand, slick with her, that he brushed over his swollen erection within the part of his robes. He grasped it, and guided it out for her. At the thin skin of the head he could already sense her radiant warmth. The scent of her rose like incense between them and he licked his wide lips and stared at her mouth.

In a true marriage, in a contract of love, they would have kissed. If they were lovers, she would be pressed to him.

She did look at him then, unguarded in every sense of the word. Shame at her physical response, determination to complete her duty, something like hate for he who had forced her into this position - clear, as her heart could not dissemble. What surprised him was the bare desperate shine in her eyes: this was too meaningful to her. Although he had come as a thief, there was nobody else to cling to at this moment.

Yet time was running out. He could not afford her tenderness at the cost of triumph.

"Yuna - we must hurry." His arm slid up to wrap around her and drag her against his chest. The shock of contact pulled a gasp from her throat; the silk of his robes against her bare breasts, the press of his overwarm skin against her own, the weird muscles of his torso that felt so unnatural writhing against her... so much to take in at once. "If you dwell on it, you will be too scared to do it."

"You're right." She softly replied, glad to hide her face against his shoulder. He would orchestrate everything, as he had from the beginning. Nausea, pricked by alienation and his too-skilled hands, bristled over her as she allowed him to lower her. Her knees shuffled forward and clung to his hips. The tip of him probed at her softness and she closed her eyes tightly, her hands balling into fists at his shoulders. A sharp sound of complete revulsion broke from her and was muffled against his neck, lost in his elegant bittersweet fragrance and tender skin.

Seated, he took her hips in hand and urged her down. There was no pain, only a profoundly alien sensation of fullness and, too, a helplessness, a deprivation. She shuddered and leaned into his warm embrace at last.

He folded his arms over her back, enclosing her as she enclosed him. She was snug and slippery; sliding inside her had been like getting enfolded in a skintight membrane under deep waters. Liquid pressure and gliding heat she brought to him and he retained his perfect calm out of pure spite for her martyrdom. If they had been lovers, he would have cried out and bucked against her, and she would have been glad of it.

The crush of her slender body against his chest made him want to shove deeper into her but she was already flush against him. Her tightness came of youth and inexperience, he realized, stealing knowledge from her body. The fragile quivering muscles inside her were very tender when they clenched around him.

She was otherwise still. Her burning eyes stared over his shoulder, past the ornate back of his chair, to the gold-sheathed window at the far wall. There was no sign of her guardians. The play of his hand over her hair made her flinch, and when he immediately began to pull away she felt obligated to follow, chastised and trapped.

"Yuna..." It was not so much a warning as a reminder. Demonstratively, almost impartially, he rolled his hips up under her. The shallow thrust flattened the folds of her silky labia against him, and he nearly felt the firm nub of her cervix roll along the head of his cock. She was so small... so much more so now would he have to be restrained.

She moaned against his ear. Shakily she pulled herself up and felt the withdrawing glide of his erection inside with fear - fear of his size, of his control, fear of the trickle of pleasure that she discovered there. When she sank back down again the friction of his parted robes dragged at her breasts like tongues. She heard his groan stoppered in his throat and wondered how he could possibly do this, what kind of man could possibly enjoy this.

He felt her trembling and wondered how she could possibly stand to go so slowly, and whether she hoped to stall him.

"Stop," He ordered, halting her mid-descent. "Let me. Hold yourself up - the armrests, if you cannot kneel."

Shocked anew, she couldn't manage to follow his instructions at once. She drew back and stared at him, and he in turn unwrapped his arms from her back and guided her hand to the armrest, and pulled her ass into the position he wanted - hovering over him by a few inches, the head of his penis still thrust inside her. She allowed herself to be led, confusion gathering in her eyes; he answered her with a silent heated look that was at odds with the precision of his movements.

"Hold yourself here."

Smoothing his palm over her belly he looked down at the place where their bodies were joined, and he flushed. His back tightened and his ass lifted from the seat and he pushed up into her, shallower now, yet at liberty to set his own pace. Her answering cry, however muted, did not sound of _grief_.

Yet it was hard to hold herself over him, hard to hold still as he filled her and pulled away, rhythmic as a metronome, never speeding nor slowing but beating a steady and deliberate pulse inside her. He was braced with his feet on the auburn rug and his shoulder pressed hard against the carved wood of the chair, and she could barely manage to absorb the strength of his strokes, much less to urge him on with kisses or sighs. He seemed so far away, locked within himself, his eyes shut and his hands fanned loosely over her back.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

 

"I hesitated to ask this of you before, but if you are are serious as you claim..."

"I am." There was tremendous certainty in her voice; how brightly she burned in her youth. Only the young and innocent could commit themselves so completely to the unknown. As he had done, once, nearly at the same age as she was now, until in the ruins of Zanarkand his trust was so formally crushed. He tore himself from memory to answer her.

"There is a Guado tradition that should be followed. _Should_ , Lady Yuna; I would not insist on _must_."

"I will... abide as you see fit, Maester Seymour."

"Please," He smiled, expansive to the point of condescension. "You must not be so formal with me."

 

She had already removed her travelling boots. He began by loosening the ribbons that held her furisode sleeves up on her arms. The light cotton cloth fell away in his hands. Conscientiously he pulled the corners square and folded them, tucking the ribbons under, and turned from her to lay them on his desk. "It is not necessary to go through with this. I will _understand_ if your courage fails."

"It won't." _For the sake of Spira. For Lord Jyscal's death._ "I am resolved."

"An admirable quality." He concured, dry irony heaped and spilling over every syllable. He stood behind her then and unwound the stiff ornamented fabric of her sash. Her white wrap fell away without its structure, revealing a black brassiere which tied behind her neck. His delicate fingers drew her hair to each side to unfasten it, conscious of her softness and her scent, travel-worn and frost-kissed, yet nevertheless writ in pale floral shades. "You are beautiful, Yuna."

She bowed her head to accommodate him and said nothing. Her hands clutched at her skirt, and she was consoled by the heaviness and coolness of its familiar pleats. But this, too, would have to be removed. He had to run his fingers under the waist of it nearly all the way around before he found the zipper. It released with a slithery sound, and the cloth slid from her hips to the floor. Thin black panties were all that remained to her. Against her pale skin, in this dim room, they were seductive, and he wanted to take his time stripping them from her.

It was time he didn't have.

"Will you remove your underwear?" His hands circled her waist and eased up her body, cupping her breasts in each hand. They were tender and shell-pink and high on her chest, and either the cold or his closeness had provoked her nipples to swelling erectness. She was still warm from her clothing and smooth as the surface of a clear lake.

"O-of course."

How easily he followed the motion of her body as she bent to slide them from her hips and off her legs. The crisp press of his sash and ceremonial robes at her back irritated her; it was unfair that she had to strip down and he was permitted to remain hidden, judging her, holding himself above her always. _All of this was so unfair._ There was something secret, slow, like the pull of gravity at a great distance, about the feeling of his hands on her. _For Kilika, for Luca... for Besaid._ She promised herself. Willfully she refused to understand what it meant - this trickling chill-hot feeling along her limbs - when his hands slid down her belly, and his head dipped low over her shoulder as though tasting the firelight before them.

 

Her elbows buckled and she plunged down onto him with a frightened moan that clipped in her throat like a wounded bird. His hiss was taut and strong against her hair, and he scrunched back in his seat as though burned. The unthinkable tightness and closeness of her - the almost painful sensation of the barrier of the back of her vagina - he had never felt such a thing before. Did it pain her, would she demand to be released...

Instead she clung to him, lost and beyond herself, with only the strength of his arms to comfort her. She was not strong enough to fight this battle. She couldn't do it alone. Silently she cried out for Lulu and Wakka to fuss over her, for Rikku to smile, for Auron's sure power, for Tidus to come for her and take her away. Kimahri had never left her side, not for ten years - where was he now?

There was only Seymour, strange and powerful, whose shaking hand stroked her hair away from her face. She lifted her eyes to him and found his looking back, grey and distant with exertion. "Seymour --" She could not put words to her plea. She did not know what she wanted, only that this horrible hollowness in her heart was too much to bear by herself.

He arched against her by reflex, anticipating and gratified by her answering gasp. His palm cupped the back of her head. "I am here."

Unhestitatingly and unstintingly gentle, he pulled her against him and set his lips against hers. His mouth had a lingering aromatic bitterness that she didn't understand or recognize; to him, hers had the sweetness and warmth of almonds. His tongue tipped the seam of her lips as they pressed against each other, inviting her to join him; his body rolled against hers and into hers, and she panted abruptly, and her little tongue uncurled to touch his.

She was shocked to own that this intimacy filed the edge from her fears. Like seeking shelter in a storm she pressed closer to him, searching for his masculinity above his halfbreed strangeness, hungry for what affection he could offer in place of cold tradition. _If it must be done - if this terrible thing must be done --_

He felt the delicate shattering of her will like a physical embrace.

His heavy sigh of relief unfurled against her mouth. His hands locked over her back and held her in place against him, and he moved with her in a lithe tightly-drawn arching of hips. Her firm buttocks trembled against his palm. She felt the subtle grind of his cock inside her body and let it pull a little sweetness from her as she tightened around him, deliberately this time. This he answered with open desire and the tender tug of his teeth on her lower lip.

"Hold on to me," He muttered. She clasped her arms around him so quickly then, yanking on his hair where it fell over his neck.

His hand crept between their bodies and struggled past the crush where they moved together, and eased into the furrow of her vulva. In her wetness his fingertips slid easily against the folds of her. He sought her swollen ripe clitoris but his touch was mild, dainty; his secretive smile was for the possibility that she had never felt this before.

 

The Chamber of the Fayth was wrought of some highly polished stone touched with lapis; in the pale glow of the great burial cabochon the walls looked glazed with ice. The ceiling was so high it faded into darkness above. Long silk streamers descended from its unknowable height and waved in an unfelt draft. On the floor, at the center, with her knees touching the poured glass, Yuna prayed with an unsettled heart. She was alone at last.

He had accompanied her with two guards - full-blooded Guado, with their strange shellacked hair and fingers that dangled to their knees. It was an unpleasant surprise, finding them standing guard outside the door. When they had left --

"I would carry you, Yuna." Her first steps after dressing had been awkward. She was too aware now of where her legs connected to her body, conscious of a deep and subtle soreness in her belly, and utterly exhausted. He stood at the doorway neatly wrapped and pressed, clear-eyed, smiling faintly. _Proud_ of her discomfort.

"I can walk." She had insisted. _But where?_

"Then," He answered, mildly. "Come, I will take you to the Chamber. Shiva awaits."

She felt leaden and impious. Each word took such effort to find and say. "Thank you, but ... That's not necessary. I will wait for my guardians."

"This is my temple, and you are my wife." Was all he had said, simply and plainly, as though it explained everything.

\-- The stone tile beneath her was bitterly cold. It made her shins ache but she was glad of it, now; it comforted her and allowed her to focus.

 

"A- _ah_!" Her keening sigh broke over his lips and filled him with intense possessive joy. He let her flexed back inform his rhythm - she pushed against him, artlessly and incoherently needy, and he arched into her in responsive rocking counterpoint. The clinging softness of her inside and out tore at his self-control. His reserve grew threadbare; he nudged her chin up with his own and dipped below to swallow her throat in consuming kisses. The lick and lap of each kept pace with the glide of his fingers against her.

Within her, desperation mounted to panic. She had been prepared to sacrifice her body to him but _this_ \- what he took now went past everything. His tongue flattened over the vulnerable veins at the base of her throat and she snatched at him, burrowing against him, letting her head fall against his shoulder and pleading with him bodily to _please... make it end._ His smug chuckle should have incensed her, she realized that, but when his long, dense, consoling arm wrapped under her shoulders and cradled her, lifting her against his stroke, she didn't want to think about anything but this rich feeling.

Her slim quivering thighs curled around his hips and he felt their milky slide against him each time he moved. He was unbearably close. Every push into her body went beyond pleasure to aching disappointment, a climax deferred again and again by brutal stinging will. His iron discipline was pure show; within he pitched between naked delight at her succumbing and irrational anger that she took _so long_. She felt so snug and untried and juicy, how could he possibly be expected to hold himself back, all that mattered now was coming and the end of the necessaries and just filling her, taking her, _making use of her_.

His fingers slipped against her folds and pressed against the sleek little cord of her that ran just under the skin. She moaned again, agonizingly aware of the shocks of pleasure that would burst from the roll of their bodies together. This terrible empty yearning - he had to - everything he did was a promise that he could bring an end to it. She ground against his hand and sank her nails into the plush muscles of his back, past rationality. " _Please..._ " She cried.

"Let it happen." His unctuous politeness had fallen away. There was only a bare masculine hunger in his voice, and a quietude like the calm before a hurricane. He shoved up into her hard and his fingers twisted against her _so_ -

 

In communion the voice of Shiva was dulcet and and sweetly feminine. When at last she came to speak, Yuna had thought she was hearing her mother call her. As hard as she'd tried to clear her mind and pray with single-minded purpose, there was such - interference. Even the voice of the Fayth was hidden from her. But Shiva persisted.

_Why do you seek my power, Yuna._

"To defeat Sin - to bring the Calm. For Spira." A jumble of ideas. She bitterly felt she had managed to repeat herself in just a few words.

_You are greatly disturbed._

"...I'm sorry."

In rapt silence she felt the touch of the Fayth within her mind. A literal cold comfort: the holy grasp of the ice-witch was cooling like a mother's hand stroking her hair in the midst of fever. She was _not_ alone; she had been isolated for a time only, but there was still hope. An image came to her - a young man in violet, kneeling where she knelt, his eyes closed tight, his face suffused with divine ecstacy. The expression was overwhelmingly and painfully familiar.

_As he was once, he is no longer._

Yuna could say nothing to this. There was no-one to turn to and ask for help.

_He intends infinite destruction. Who will defeat him?_

 

Her whole body seized up, helplessly tight against him and around him, and she felt like she was falling through snow and fire. She needed his hardness and heaviness and the powerful stroke of his thick penis inside her, so she pressed to him and lifted her mouth to his to kiss him again - to be close, to say like _this_ what she couldn't say aloud even if she had the words. He responded with complete malleability to her desire, anger in his heart and lust on his lips, and drove himself into her as she shook with long swells of dazzling orgasm.

He felt her spasms with a hard burning delight. He crushed her against him and took her mouth, plunging his tongue into her as her ass brushed against his testicles with the depth of his penetration. He was desperate to be _in_. His fierce need for friction slipped in her grasp. When she shuddered and lay open to him he thought of her soft compliant eyes and the sight of his cock disappearing into her body, and he felt his bonds slipping from him, and his semen spilling from him, and he let the complete aching tide of pleasure submerge his consciousness. His hips pressed up reflexively and convulsively. He was sealed tight against her. His head fell back, his eyes closed; he seemed transfixed by some impossible radiance.

They were alone, the universe had collapsed down to just the two of them. Yuna's arms tightened around his neck. A shattering awareness of what had happened - she had to stave it off somehow, though she felt it coming for her. It hunted her. Perhaps he felt it too, as he folded back around her and lifted his hand to her hair and caressed her. A low wordless murmur rumbled in her ear, an apology, an appreciation. A ward against the coming darkness that would not hold.

 

When she emerged, he was waiting on the stair. When his expectant eye met hers he seemed to understand at once.

"Yuna!" Cried a young man's voice. Glad recognition swept through her. Her guardians - how long had they been here? Had he kept them from her on purpose?

Seymour turned from her smile as though cursed.

"But _why_..." _Why did it take you so long? Why didn't you come for me?_

How grateful she was, in the weeks to come, that brave, straightforward, holy Auron answered the wrong question, and saved her from ever having to explain what had passed.

 

Her serious face as she knelt over him - it was his last living sight. He didn't even have the strength to reach for her. She was so lovely even now, flush from battle, with despair brilliant in her eyes. He had tied her sash himself, but could not turn his head to see it at her slender waist. The tender bow of her lips parted as his vision darkened. He remembered...


End file.
